Despite the growing awareness of the important ecological functions and values provided by coastal and estuarine wetlands, wetland degradation continues worldwide due to increasing anthropogenic disturbances. Chongming Dongtan wetlands, adjacent to Shanghai, the largest city and industrial and trading port in China in rapid urban expansion and socioeconomic development are currently threatened with biodiversity reduction, wetland loss, contamination, and invasion of exotic plant.

The present study demonstrates remote sensing derived phenological and productivity indicators of ecosystem functional dynamism. The indices were derived from SPOT VEGETATION NDVI data on 1km spatial resolution across the pan-European continent using the Phenolo approach. The phenological and productivity indices explained 78% of the variance in the European ecosystem gradient measured by bio-climatic zones. Along this gradient climatic predictors could only explain 57% of the variance in the satellite metrics.

Accurate and timely land cover change detection at regional and global scales is necessary for both natural resource management and global environmental change studies. Satellite remote sensing has been widely used in land cover change detection over the past three decades. The variety of satellites which have been launched for Earth Observation (EO) and the large volume of remotely sensed data archives acquired by different sensors provide a unique opportunity for land cover change detection.

Change detection with remotely sensed imagery plays an important role in land cover mapping, process analysis and dynamic information services. Euclidean distance, correlation and other mathematic metrics between spectral curves have been used to calculate change magnitude in most change detection methods. However, many pseudo changes would also be detected because of inter-class spectral variance, which remains a significant challenge for operational remote sensing applications.

The abandonment of farmland has become a widespread phenomenon in post-socialist countries that have seen revolutionary changes in their economic systems. The phenomenon is notable in vineyard areas, where abandonment leads to the loss of the unique character of vineyard landscapes. This paper assesses the extent of vineyard abandonment in Slovakia and analyses the driving forces behind it. We used statistical and Corine Land Cover data to map the change in vineyard areas in Slovakia and analyse the pressure of underlying driving forces.

Conservation planning and implementation require identifying pertinent habitats and locations where protection and management may improve viability of targeted species. The winter range of Bicknell’s Thrush (Catharus bicknelli), a threatened Nearctic-Neotropical migratory songbird, is restricted to the Greater Antilles. We analyzed winter records from the mid-1970s to 2009 to quantitatively evaluate winter distribution and habitat selection.

The Holdridge life zone (HLZ) model has been improved to help classify the biome transition zone (BTZ) in China's Loess Plateau. A positive and negative transformation index of land-cover (PNTIL) was developed to quantitatively evaluate the land-cover changes in every type of BTZ. Three bioclimatic datasets, with a spatial resolution of 1km×1km, were used to classify the BTZ type in Loess Plateau. These include the mean annual biotemperature (MAB), average total annual precipitation (TAP) and potential evapotranspiration ratio (PER).

Carbon-based forest conservation requires the establishment of ‘reference emission levels’ against which to measure a country or region's progress in reducing their carbon emissions. In East Africa, landscape-scale estimates of carbon fluxes are uncertain and factors such as deforestation poorly resolved due to a lack of data. In this study, trends in vegetation cover and carbon for East Africa were quantified using moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) land cover grids from 2002 to 2008 (500-m spatial resolution), in combination with a regional carbon look-up table.

Land use change is one of the main stress factors on ecosystems near urban areas. We analysed land use dynamics within Xochimilco, a World Heritage Site area in Mexico City. We used satellite images and GIS to quantify changes in land use/land cover (LULC) from 1989 to 2006 in this area, and a Markov projection model to simulate the impact of different management scenarios through to 2057. The results show an alarming rate of urbanisation in 17 years. LULC change runs in one direction from all other land use categories towards urban land use.

The paper demonstrates the application of a new water accounting plus (WA+) framework to produce information on depletion of water resources, storage change, and land and water productivity in the Indus basin. It shows how satellite-derived estimates of land use, rainfall, evaporation (E), transpiration (T ), interception (I ) and biomass production can be used in addition to measured basin outflow, for water accounting with WA+. It is demonstrated how the accounting results can be interpreted to identify existing issues and examine solutions for the future.

Scientific evidence indicates that global warming could well lead to a sea-level rise of 1 meter or more in the 21st century. This paper seeks to quantify how a 1-meter sea-level rise that would affect coastal wetlands in 76 developing countries and territories, taking into account how much of wetlands would be submerged and how likely the wetlands would move inland as the coastline recedes. It is estimated that approximately 64 percent of the freshwater marsh, 66 percent of Global Lakes and Wetlands Database coastal wetlands, and 61 percent of brackish/saline wetlands are at risk.

This paper examines some of the concepts
surrounding the idea that forests and trees can contribute
to making households more resilient to food insecurity. The
paper begins with a discussion of the widely accepted
definitions of food security, and the implications for our
understanding of the role of forests and trees in
contributing to food security. Authors discuss the origins
of the idea of resilience, adaptability, and transformation